


Ayahina week

by almost_certain



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Ayahina Week, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Keeping it over the clothes kids, SO MUCH FLUFF, Teenage Dorks, ayahina, just oh my god this ship, not really smut for once, three days and no smut, will add moretags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almost_certain/pseuds/almost_certain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling the prompts while my heart literallly breaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. confessions/firsts

HHe had to admit, there was a certain level of entertainment in watching her squirm. They'd been back for a few hours, some of the more excitable lackeys were swapping war stories, describing in detail their every attack, ever movment and usually, despite how much he'd pretend to be above that, he'd join in because if anyone could boast of their skill on the battlefield it was this sadstic motherfucker.

Instead of boating though, he found himelf watching her face, tracking the change from pale but rosy, to almost green, to bright pink and so on. when the chatter woud get too loud she would look down at her hands and ball her little fists in to the dark fabric of her cloak. Most of them had wiped themselves clean but there were still stains, scratches, plenty of blood to smell and boast about. Her though? There'd been nothing on her hands before she'd even washed them, but all the same she'd scrubbed them raw. 

'Hinami,' He'd spoken and the chatter of the others had died instantly. He felt their eyes on him but kept his on her, letting his limbs hand over the arm of the beaten up sofa. 'How did you do it?'

She swallowed, he didn't need super hearing to hear the way her breath shudddered as she finally looked up. Her eyes were a little watery but she looked tired more than anything else. 'I just...' She gave a non commital shrug.

Tatara had told him personally, 'Make sure she kills something.' 

' _Hinami, you take care of the gaurds around the back. Two of them, but if they get the word out we're in big trouble.'_

_'Oh...' She had squeaked, brow furrowed in confusion. 'Me...?'_

_'You.' He poked her chin, smirked at the way she recoiled. 'I don't need you with me. Go take out the gaurds. That's all you need to do.'_

_He watched her, he'd been told to. He'd seen her drag the unonscious gaurds behind the gun metal grey of the bins before sweeping away to the rendevous point. When one of the gaurds had groggily stood, hand fumblling for his radio Ayato had put him down, then the other, just in case._

'You always remember the first one, so how was it?' He continued, stretching himself out like a cat. 

She blushed. 'I just... i just, uh...' She raised her hand and mimicked the snap of a neck, and he fought to keep his smile from breaking out in to a very unbecoming laugh. 'killed them.'

The chatter took up again, and he watched her make en effort to join in even if the colour of her cheeks kept changing.

* * *

 

He'd expected her sooner, sneaking up through the shadows of the alley to pull at the fabric at his elbow. 'Ayato-kun...' She sniffed, her voice a bundle of tremors. 'Ayato-kun I have a confession...'

'A confession?' He scoffeed, snatching his arm away. 'I'm flattered, but I'm busy so...'

'No!' She scrunched up her eyes and shouted. 

He sighed, turning back and towering over her. At first he was a little peeved that she didn't immediately shrink away, he really did have something to do. 

'I didn't do it!' She half shouted. 

'Hiinami...' He growled. They weren't alone, anyone could be listening. 

'I didn't kill them!' 

His hand closed over her mouth and she hit the drab concrete wall withh a startled whimper. 'Will you shut your mouth? I know!' He hissed, turning his head to peer up at the distant end of the alleyway. Satisfied there was no one around he looked back to her, shocked to find her scowling at him, mouth still under his palm. 'Don't worry about it.' He took his hand back suddenly, as if her lips burnt him. 

'But if they saw...'

'They didn't see.' He turned to walk away. 'But that is the first and last time I'm covering for you.' 

She pressed her fingertips to her lips and watched him go. Covering for her? She thought she would burst. For days she had been worrying, anticipating the look on his face when she came clean. 'You put the plan at risk! If you couldn't do it you should have said. If they saw you...' He'd known, the bastard. He'd probably killed them as soon as she'd turned the corner and she'd not heard because she'd been too busy worrying about what to tell him but of course he'd been watching. Of course it had been a test. Of course she'd failed. 

The sound of him clearing his throat startled her. He was standing a few feet away, looking - dare she say - sheepishly over her head. 'Hey... Uh, Hinami... Say, could you not tell anyone else that I covered for you...'

She nodded, struck dumb by his sudden display of awkwardness. 'Okay.' She noddded.

He looked at her, pursing his lips as if he might say something else. Instead he huffed and turned to disappear down the alleyway. 

'Thank you, Ayato-kun.' She murmured, turning to walk back down in a daze.

 


	2. Sparring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff. Tooth rotting fluff. 
> 
> Day 2 sparring

'You've gone all pink Hina-chan.' He laughed, surprising her by holding the humour for a minute. Then it was gone and he crossed the distance between them in a heart beat, sending a kick in to her knee, it gave with a snap and white hot pain, and that's training done for the day.

She sat with her back against his, and she was irritated. Irritated that he'd won another one, irritated that even though her tears were dry he wouldn't spar any more today, and irritated that she could feel the fierce heat of his skin through her own thin T-shirt pressing back easily, as if he didn't feel her at all. 

'Have you cooled down? Can you put your shirt back on?' She wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve to get rid of the last traces of tears before chancing a glance over her shoulder. He turned his and for a moment they were looking at eachother, so she could feel his breath against her cheek. 

His head dropped in a little nod and he left her, the warmth gone, the support she hadn't realised she had been leaning on gone. Unable to fine a suitable position she stood too, dusting off her legs. The knee still ached but she hadn't realised how much pain she was still in until it took her weight and she crumpled down. 

'Easy.' He laughed warmly. 'I told you it's going to take a while.'

'I just want to go home alright!' She grunts, teeth gritted against the radiating pain in her leg. She looked up at him, all lithe long limbs draped in a too big shirt, and for some reason her cheeks lit up like napalm. 

'Fine.' She was easy enough to pull up and easier to tip over his shoulders but her little screech as his hand came to rest on her backside wasn't pleasant. 'Relax, who'd want to touch a tiny thing like that?'

'Then why are you touching it!' She swung her legs, injury and all, in to his stomach until he stopped walking. 

'Quit it or I'll drop you on your flat ass.'

'Put. Me. Down!' The last word was accentuated by a blow across the back of his head and it was a shock to them both when they tumbled down against the concrete. 

The spring day outside the gutted red brick factory was a din of crickets, far away traffic and the occasional chirp of birds. Outside long grass had reclaimed much of the area, and ivy wound its way in through broken windows, down the bricks and across the floor inside. Lying on his back, Hinami's body still draped across his torso, Ayato let it all sink in. At floor level the Summer heat in this dusty damp place had more of a chill, but she was warm, and for such a little thing she was reassuringly heavy. 

She sniffed and shifted until her chest was on his own, not awkwardly hanging off and pressing in to the floor. Her soft hands came to rest on his shoulders and she pushed him gently back in to the floor as she pulled her head away.

It was supposed to be reassuring, but a second after he'd ran his fingertips across her cheek he realised that it wasn't, not at all. If anything it was unsettling wasn't it? Here they were, alone in the middle of nowhere and he was taking the opportunity to touch her. Somehow the little act seemed more intrusive than hoisting her over his shoulder had been.

She sighed, her eyes a storm of uncertainty, but she didn't pull away. When his hand stilled, knuckles pressed soft against her cheek she only raised her own to keep it there. At some point he had lifted his head, not all the way but enough to make it clear. She had avoided looking at him when he had removed his shirt but she found herself thinking then that his oversized hoodies and shirts must be hiding something, since he was supporting both their weight with one arm braced against the cold concrete. 

She didn't know what to expect but undeterred she let her head move forwards until the soft skin of her lips brushed his. It wasn't a kiss yet and she could still hear his thunderous heartbeat, their uncertain breaths, the birds and the crickets and the far away traffic and...

'Someone's coming.' She turned her head, and the tension washed away, replaced by the mild disappointment and vague confusion. 

When the two teenagers they open the rotting heavy wood door they laughed. The girl's blue sundress fluttered in the breeze, her long light hair dances around as she examined their new found secret. 'It's so old.'

'Yeah,' the boy agreed eloquently. 'Falling apart.'

Ayato pressed her against the rough brick of the back wall, keeping an eye through the broken glass of a window at their unwanted guests. 'Can you walk?'

Hinami nodded.

'Can you run?' He smirked.

'Just try to pick me up again.' She warned.

'Well.' He glanced back at the couple who were now pressed against a wall near the entrance, arms wound tightly around eachother. 'If you ate you'd...'

'No.' Hinami frowned up at him, quite determined. 

'You can't stop me.' He hissed back, though at once he only felt ashamed as the expression she wore hardened to almost hatred.

'We should go before they... Uh...' She looked away over his shoulder lips fixed in a little pout. 

He looked back to see the girl's dress had been hitched up, the boy's hand roaming beneath. 'Yeah.' 

* * *

 

'Again.' His voice echoed around the walls of the drained swimming pool that was their sparring ring for the day. 

'We've been going for hours.' She huffs, but all the same she braces herself, widens her stance, drops her elbows against her chest.

'Just do it again.' He grunts, and like a bolt she flies at him, fists meeting his defences at every angle.

'Oi!' He catches her by the wrist and easily spins her off, letting her go to take a few heavy steps. 'You're getting worse.'

'Ayato-kun.' She sighed, turning to face him with one hand on her hip. 'I'm tired. We've been sparring all day.'

He scoffs. 'We're not sparring. I don't hold back when we're sparring.' 

Outside the rain batters against the glass and the tin of the roof. 'Fine.' She tugged on her vest to stop it riding up over her hips. 'Then spar with me.' She closes her eyes for a second, listening to the percussion of the storm. 

She opened her eyes to find him closer, scrutinising her. She watched the expression on his face shift, expected a laugh as he turned to walk away or a shove. 'Okay.' He looked nervous. 'I'll attack. You'll have to defend and attack. Can you do that?'

She bared her teeth. 'I don't know, I had a shit teacher.' 

Her words catch him off guard, the profanity a strange new element on her tongue. He'd coaxed swear words from her before, mostly the result of an injury or a pulled muscle but to outright say it like that... Her fist caught him under the jaw, a glancing blow but more than she'd managed for the last hour. He lashed out at her shoulder, then as she spun kicked hard at her back. She dodged - she really was graceful these days - sweeping under his next blow to fling her own at his stomach. Theirwrists collided, an oversight on his part since he had thought to block too late, and the bones in each cracked. 

'Hah.' She beamed as they sat in the shallow end shoulder to shoulder. 'I hurt you.'

'Yeah.' He grunted, looking at his hand as if he might cut the thing off. 

'Need to keep your head out of the clouds Ayato-kun.' She said in a tone that was only just too high to be an effective impression of his own. 'Doesn't pay to get distracted.'

'Shut up.' He grumbled, but there was no heat to his voice.

'Were you distracted?' She changed tactic, pouting up at him before leaning back against the pool wall. 

He had been, he'd been thinking that her flat ass wasn't s flat anymore. Actually that she was growing well, that she had hardly been ugly when she first arrived if a little puffy from crying, and now she was less ugly and she had lost the jerky unsure quality to her movements and if he was honest...

'No, guess I'm just tired too.' He leaned back as well. Their elbows touched. 

It wasn't a suitable place, she knew, taking in the dust and the discarded cans, the spiderwebs and the rats that moved just beyond her eyesight but within earshot (which for her wasn't saying much). There was nothing romantic about this, except perhaps the symphony of raindrops on tin and glass and the occasional drip to the tiles. 

'It's cold.' She whispered, mostly to herself, but he pressed closer in answer. 'Why don't we train... Why don't we spar with everyone else?'

He shrugged. 'You can if you like.'

'You don't want to?' She shuffled closer. 

'I didn't think you'd want to.' He admitted. 

They sat without saying anything else, but they moved closer with ever whir of wind through the building, until she was tucked under his ar, her legs thrown across his. When she'd done it she'd expected a nervous laugh, but he'd only stared straight ahead, jaw tense. Then when she'd tried to take them down his hand had stopped her, resting against the kneecap, and there it had stayed. 

The most frustrating thing, Hinami thought to herself, was that he seemed so calm. His heart wasn't any faster than it usually was, his face was as close to neutral as the permanently pissed off Ayato could manage, and here she was, shaking like a new born baby rabbit in his arms. 'Hey, Ayato-kun.' 

He turned his head, to his horror bumping his nose in to hers. When had they moved so close? He'd been busy thinking of sparring candidates, of people she could hold her own against. 

 _There it is_ , she thought smugly. _His heart beat._

'What?' He was more than aware of her breath on his lips. 

She leant back, letting her eyes fall to his mouth, to the soft curve of an almost smile. When she met his eyes she found his own staring back.

It was not romantic. His lips were firm and cold and hard and she'd opened her mouth too wide. They were surrounded by dust and trash, they were cold, still sweaty and in their designated work out clothes. She had always wanted to kiss someone for the first time at a lake, or at her front door after a date. She wanted them to thread their fingers through her hair, to stroke her cheek with soft warm fingertips...

His hand wound around her ribs as he pulled her against him and she found that actually she couldn't care. Sinking back against the pool floor she groaned against his lips, pulling at his jacket, at his hair until he opened his mouth against her. 

She thought clearly that she'd always wanted to kiss him in that old building, with the birds singing and the traffic distant, with no one around for miles. It had been on her mind for the majority of the year, and the fantasy blew the other perfect kiss scenarios out of the water.

He pulled back, cheeks a dusky pink as he looked down at her. She was sure her own were even darker. 'Well.' He sighed. 'Can't do that if we start sparring around other people.' 

She brought her hands up to her face, peeking through her fingers as she muffled her laugh.

'What?' He smirked. 'Well fine, we can.' He was babbling, she realised. 'I'll just have to kiss Miza too, so it's fair...'

'Hey.' She chided, letting her hands drop. 

His smirk faded to a sad smile as he brought his fingers up to brush across the heat of her cheeks. 'Probably shouldn't tell anyone.' 

'Hm.' She sighed, content to just lie there in the dust and the grime if he would keep looking at her like that. 'Your secret is safe with me.'

He laughed, pressing his head in to the hollow of her neck. 'Uh. Yeah. Great.' 

She let her fingers run through the thick strands of his hair, and tried To calm her heart beat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want them to be happy before one inevitably dies :'D alright. Great.


	3. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family.

He probably didn't need the scarf, even in the dead of winter. Ayato had spent time sleeping in back alleys, he was used to the bite of Tokyo's winters, used to suffering through it in his hoody and jeans. Still she wound the fucking thing around his neck and offered him the brand new off the hanger jacket with an irrepressible pride in her honey brown eyes. 'You will get cold.' She said.

'Nah...' He floundered. 'I don't need it.' She hadn't bought anyone else winter clothing.

'Please? T... Eto, she said your old one was ruined...'

'I said I don't fucking want it...'

Her compousure broke and she sighed the way one would faced with a petulant child. 'Listen,' she dropped her voice. 'Maybe they can't but I can hear you shivering when we're out on patrol.' There was a long moment of silence. 'I'm going to leave this coat here.' She walked around him to hang it on the back of a chair, smoothing down the sleeve before turning and fixing him with a glare. 'If you don't want it just leave it.'

He wasn't vain, but he did have a healthy respect for his own image, and so Ayato had appropriated a mirror for his meagre room. It was a bit worn and he had it propped against the wall so he always looked to be leaning back, but it meant he was always the right distance between trying too hard and not trying at all when it came to clothes or hair. In the mirror he looked at himself, buttoned up the coat that was somewhere between denim and heavy cotton with his hands stuffed in to the warm pockets. The grey scarf she had wound around his neck was tucked in under the collar and he was warm. It was slightly too big but he was warm.

'Fuck her.' He grumbled, red faced, at his reflection. What would it be next? Would she knit him a pair of gloves, or a nice frilly blanket. Since she'd got there it was 'Ayato-kun, do you need anything?', 'Could I come with you? I can be your ears.', 'Stay safe, Ayatooo.' Her stupid voice made him want to stupid hit her. '

This is your fault, shitty Aneki.' He told his reflection with a snarl. 'For looking like me.'

He found her drawing in the snow with the tip of her winter boots, the tokyo skyline at her back. She didn't look at him before she started smiling, she somehow already knew he was wearing it. 'Looks good on you.' She smiled like a child. 'I'll feel better.'

He looked over the cloak she wore, watched it dance around her frame. 'Are you warm in that thing?'

'Huh? Oh, yeah.' She lifted it up to reveal a mustard yellow pullover and a heavy wool skirt over just as thick leggings. 'Layers.'

They walked in silence, Hinami chewing away at her bottom lip as they went. He considered saying something, chose not to, then when the silence grew thick again stomped one foot and turned to her with a sigh. 'I Know. You can tell me.'

'Tell you... What are you talking about Ayato-kun?'

'That eye patch bastard.' He shrugged, stuffing his hands deeper in to the new warm pockets. 'So he's not dead, huh?'

The sigh left her in a little cloud, trailing away from her profile like cigarette smoke. 'Ay... I'm not supposed to talk about it...'

'If I already know it's fine.' He huffed, more than a bit irritated. 'You've had this look on your face, like you can't stop thinking.'

'Hm.' She turned to face him with a weak smile. 'I thought I'd lost the last piece of my family... I thought they were all gone but then I found out Nee-chan was safe, and now big brother...'

'Okay.' He folded his arms turning his head away. 'I don't actually care, but just don't keep things from me if it could affect our mission.'

'Eh?' She straightened up, hair bristling and teeth bared like a little terrier. 'Well just say that in the first place!'

'I shouldn't have to. You've been getting overly familiar.'

'Tch. We're not actually on a mission.' She turned and started to walk again. He followed, happy that the angry distance between them was more comfortable than the empty one had been.

 

II

 

'It's not a bad thing.' She reassured the blond with one hand on his shoulder. 'I miss my brother too.'

Naki wailed, huffing in great big breaths and hiccupping them back out.

'Shut up.' Ayato finally snapped, having exhausted his own ability to rise above it. 'Go cry somewhere else!'

'It's hard to lose someone.' She continued, undeterred. 'It's hard to lose family. But you have us now, don't you?'

'Do you know what his big brother did to your big brother?' He wanted to say. 'Do you know what I let him do?'

'Ayato-kun, maybe I should come with you instead.' She straightened, leaving Naki to grizzle away on the ground. 'I don't think...' She gestures with a small sweep of her wrist to the boy. 'Uh, do you desperately need him?'

Not desperately, but he'd have rather not be dragging her around by the collar all night. 'keep up.' He turned and marched out of the lounge door, down the corridor, out in to the chill night air. She caught up just as his foot hit the pavement outside the apartment block. 'So I have to live with you and now you're on every hunt.'

'You could hunt alone.' Her teeth chattered as she swung on her cloak. 'Why did you need Naki anyway?'

He shrugged. 'He offered this morning, back when he wasn't a crying mess.'

'He misses that monster so much.' She whispered, the cold still shaking her voice. 'How can he?'

He couldn't help but smile. 'You didn't come in the way we did. Most of us weren't handed an apartment and a nice safe position, we had to work our way up.'

Banjou had mentioned the days spent getting his hands dirty at the tree roots.

'But if you ask me, Naki's always been cracked.' He chuckled to himself.

'And you?' She sniffed. 'Are you cracked?'

'Tch. Depends.'

A smell hit him, something warm and fresh. She stiffened beside him. 'Four humans.' She sniffed again. 'And they... They're killing one of them... Three of them are, I mean.'

He nodded and before she could speak he had sped off slipping his mask in to place. They weren't killing her, he thought when he turned the corner, unnoticed by the men. She was holding back money, or she had talked back, or she had stolen something or tried to get away, but they wouldn't kill her. They were giving her a decent beating, that was for sure. The woman was young, not as young as them but still under twenty. Her dark hair hung over her eyes, her pale skin goose pimpled in the winter freeze. He could see her blood drumming under the skin, the sickly blue of her veins and all. 'Oh god.' Hinami's whisper shook him loose. In a moment the three men were dead, faces still twisted in violent expressions. She was stooped over the girl, voice calming as she catalogued the injuries. 'You're okay, you're fine.'

The girl was not okay, he thought as he took a step forward, reaching to pull Hinami's hood over her face. 'You forgot your mask.' He sounded more amused than angry. 

'Gh...' The girl garbled throuh her own blood. 'Ghoul...'

Hinami touched her fingertips to one eyelid. 'There wasn't time. You said to keep up...'

'Ah.' The girl tried to move but the kicking had taken it's toll. Hinami's hands were back on her shoulders, thumbs rubbing calming circles. 

'She's seen your face.' He said, not unkindly, then turned to the wounded girl.

'Ayato!' Hinami turned on him. 

' _I have to._ ' He said without speaking, he said with a slight twitch of the eyes.

 _'Over my dead body_.' She implied with a raise of the chin and a step forward.

'She has seen your face Hinami.' He explained slowly. 

She looked back over her shoulder, to the bloody mess of a girl staring up at her with wide eyes. 'So.' She sighed. 'It's my face, not yours.' She turned back, began to run her hands over the girls arms, checking the injuries. 

The clatter of the mask hitting the floor made her hair stand on end. 'Wh... What are you...'

'You've said my name. She's seen your face and now she's seen mine.' He knelt down next to her, kakugan giving way to his dark blue eyes. 'Look away.' He didn't know why he told her that, he was usually above pity.

'Ayato.' She sniffed, but this time it wasn't the cold. 

'Please...' The girl tried to push herself away, but the blood only oozed from between her teeth. The men wouldn't have killed her, but they'd have come close. 'I w... Won't.'

 _Snap_.

Hinami let out the breath she was holding, and the sob was a strange new tone to his ears. It wasn't the sad incessant crying of her first few weeks, or the occasional low drawn out sniffs he could sometimes make out through the wall between their rooms, it was something angry. Something raw.

'Go.' He picked up his mask without looking at her, still crouched over the girl's body. 

She didn't move, but her teeth did begin to chatter. 

'Hinami.' He stood, and when she didn't follow he pulled her until she stood with her head angled to the floor, refusing to look at him. 'You should have worn your fucking mask, alright.'

She didn't respond, but another shiver racked through her arm, travelling down her fingers. With a grunt he let her go, unwinding his grey scarf and wrapping it tightly around her neck and chin. 

'Go home.'

'Don't eat her.' She whimpered, still not looking at him.

He knelt over the body, pulling down the tight skirt as if it would give the corpse some warmth. Futile.

'Ayato please.'

'Go the fuck home.' He growled, glaring at her over his shoulder. 'And next time bring your fucking mask.'

It was after two when he finally slumped through the front door, careful not to slam it as he went. He paused at her door, knuckles poised to tap on the wood, ears strained for her breathing, but he changed his mind, headed for the lounge.

'Ayato-kun.' She blinked up at him from the couch, her eyes shimmering. 'You came back.' She looked relieved.

'I live here Hina.' He shifted under her gaze, and a voice in the back of his mind goaded him. 

She smiled softly, looking down at the book in her palm, a stupid thing that Eto had signed for her. 'I'm sorry. It was my fault you had to...'

'Had to do what?' He slunk around to the kitchen corner, to the shitty plastic kettle that always made the water taste like iron. 

Hinami frowned at his back, at the jacket that was only just too big now, almost perfect if his shoulders would just broaden a bit more. He was getting there. Eto had said as they picked it out, _'He'll grow in to this one Hina-chan.'_ Of course she had been right. 

'What are you staring at?' He turned on her with narrow eyes, and then he saw it on her lap, wound around her arm. She gripped it tightly, grimacing under his gaze. 

'Your scarf, Ayato-kun...'

'It's not mine. You bought it...'

'I... I gave it to you as a...'

'I'm not your big brother Hinami. I'm not my shitty Aneki. I don't need your presents and I don't need your concern, and next time you fuck up like tonight I'll make you kill them, you understand?' He watched her mouth open and close wordlessly. 'Because you are not my fucking responsibility.'

He sat there with his coffee, listening to the pacing in the next room and unable to ignore the angry voice in his head. Who was she to come in out of nowhere like this. Who was she to tell Naki they were family. If they were - and they would be the more dysfunctional sort - she wasn't a part of it. She hadn't spent years under someone elses boot, and she hadn't learnt the hard way that humans would sell you out faster than you could tuck your children in. Well actually maybe she had. 

Her door sprung open and there she was, cloak buttoned up, hood over her head and no scarf around her thin neck, with a bag full of clothes in one hand and his shitty scarf in the other. 

'Oi.' He put his coffee down. 'Where are you...'

'I'm not your _fucking_ responserbility.' She answered smartly. 'Goodbye Ayato-kun.'

'Don't you dare...' He caught her by the wrist, gripping harder than neccessary. 'Don't be a child.'

'I'm not being a child. I don't want to be a burden.'

He shrugged, because he couldn't exactly tell her she wasn't a burden.

'Its why you left, right? So I'm leaving too.' She turned to pull but his grip only tightened. 'Ah...'

'You get back in here, drink the shitty coffee I made for you and stop thinking you know all about me just because you spent time with my sister.'

Her cheeks blushed red as she mulled it over, then the bag dropped to her feet. 'I've spent time with you too...'

'If you knew me...' Stop, his mind roared. 'Just... Sorry,' it was barely a word the way he mumbled it, 'okay.'

'What for?' She sniffed.

He shrugged. 'Besides, it's too late for a girl to be out alone.'

'Hmm.' She followed him around to the sofa, careful to sit with a space between them as she sipped the tepid instant coffee. 'Do you think that girl had someone who cared like that? Who told her not to go.' She wished she hadn't said it the moment she had, cringing at the way his face darkened, at the click of his jaw as it tensed. 

She expected a fight, another exhausting _'ah your such a shitty brat', 'well at least I have feelings_ ' exchange, but instead his face relaxed, his eyes widened and he looked at her as though she might break. 

'Hina,' he scratched the back of his head then let our a frustrated sigh. 'We're not all that lucky.' 

It felt strange being called lucky when she'd lost both parents, when she'd now lost her siblings And what she had instead was him with his whiplash personality, and an organisation that had tortured her brother.

When she handed him his scarf this time he took it, and when she came back from her room after retiring for the night in her pyjama shorts and T-shirt he only moved over slightly so she could put her head on his lap. He draped his jacket over her legs and wondered how the fuck they'd got there from a bunch of arguments and a touch at the wrist.

 

III

 

'It's been weeks.' He grumbles, and Tatara doesn't even turn to look at him. 'Ta...'

'I'm done repeating myself.' Tatara sighs as he traces the lines of a building's floor chart. 'I thought you'd have forgotten about her by now.'

'Hah, I thought it was funny before but watching you pine is...'

'Shut your mouth.' His eyes turn before he does, and Takizawa only throws back his head and laughs. 

'Ghoul's having friends. Losing friends! Thinking they're human! She's surely dead.'

'She's not dead.' Miza chirps up, but it is all she has to say on the matter. 

Eto sighs, twisting her bandaged fingers around tatara's arm. 'I'm sorry Ayato-kun but Hina-chan is gone, and I know you were fond of her but...'

'Ha ha ha! Fond. Ghoul's being fond of eachother!'

'I said shut your fucking mouth!' He makes a lunge and the freak flinches, jumps up and back even though Ayato isn't sure he could compete anymore, not really. Tatara's hand is on his neck and its squeezing. 

'I am not warning you again.'

Eto hums happily to herself as she looks over the plans. 'Maybe we should take away the memories. Hit you over the head a few times, waddya say?'

Theres a loud sniff from the corner, where Naki is wiping his eyes on his suit jacket sleeve. 'It's hard to lose family,' is all he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More like Angst week, right?


	4. Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just kept going and going until this. Not my finest. A bit of fluff. A bit of everything else. No smut.

I.

It’s winter when she turns up, and she cries the way the sleet falls, incessantly. It’s a wonder she can still cry, he thinks as he tries his best to not look at her from across the room. Can’t you run out of tears?

Other people are looking at her like she’s a scrap of meat, a wounded fawn dropped in to a wolf pit, and with her forever leaking doe brown eyes and a neat flowery clip holding her bangs back she really wasn’t helping herself. 

To make matters worse he’s seen her before, seen her laughing and smiling and draping a jacket over his sister’s back when that stupid almost human had fallen asleep over her text book. She’d been there reading books, making coffee, and now that happiness had burnt up she thought she could just swan in and join Aogiri? what a joke.

‘You look just like her when you’re mad.’ She sniffed. She stopped crying. 'Are you Ayato?’ 

His heart clenches. Why, for that waste of skin? 

'Yeah.’ Smooth. 

'I’m Hinami…’

'Fueguchi Hinami. I know. Everyone knows.’

'Oh…’

'And everyone can see you crying, so if you don’t want to be picked off as someone’s snack…’

'Oh! I’m sorry I just…’ The bright smile fades. 'You’re the first person who’s spoken to me and… Uh… Thank you Ayato-kun.’

'Tch.’ He strops - he’s aware it’s undignified but it is a strop - back to his spot at the other side of the room expecting her to cry again but the glances he spares find her only looking down at her hands, almost smiling.

  
II.

Spring comes and goes, but there’s nothing to mark it as different save the tighter schedules as the nights grow shorter and the steady increase of food now more idiots are walking around outside. 

The real thaw happens half way through Summer when she quite unexpectedly makes him laugh. They are lying on their backs at the top of his apartment building, watching the sky switch from navy to rosy pink, and she says in an uncharacteristically rough voice, 'One day you’ll kneel for me, Kirishima-san’. They both lose it.

True, they had been talking about the tree because they were always talking about the tree. For almost six months he had been explaining what he had done wrong, how to exist within its hierarchy, who really mattered when it came to following instructions, and he had said 'In the end, the only one you have to kneel to is the one eye’d king.’ Though realistically there were plenty of people you didn’t say no to. 

'Did you mean to make it sound sexy?’ He asks, still chuckling at the sky.   
  
'Sexy?’ She sounds horrified. 'No I meant…’ She arches her back so she can tilt her head to look at him, and on the grey of the gravel in the rosy dawn hue he looks vibrant. Her voice softens. 'I meant it as… How funny would it be if someone like me was put in charge of someone like you?’ 

He huffs another laugh, rubbing his hand over a tear in his T-shirt where almost an hour ago a dove had caught him. That dove was still breathing too.

Her fingers find his mask, and she holds it up, turns it over. 

'I’m glad you know who’s in charge here.’ He tries not to think about how her command to stop is the only reason that dove is still alive. 

'Eto?’ She smirks at him, and when his expression sours she throws her head back and laughs more than she has in her entire Aogiri career.

Yeah, that’s the point where he starts to thaw.

  
III.

The white roses are starting to wilt. She still lets her fingertips trace across the petals, knocking a few to the ground. 'I guess Summer’s over.’ She sighs, and he cocks an eyebrow from the opposite seat where he has been trying to look uninterested.

'The seasons don’t mean much anymore.’

'Tch.’ She mimics, face scrunched up in faux distaste. 'You don’t have to be so grumpy Ayato-kun.’ She sticks out her tongue.

'I mean it. What did we do in Summer?’ He leans back in the old patio chair raising a hand to his forehead. 'Eat, sleep, go kill doves, eat, sleep… It doesn’t make a bit of difference whether it’s Summer or we’re knee deep in snow. You want to swan around in a swimsuit just turn the heat up in the apartment…’

'Ayato-kun!’ she blushes. 'We aren’t alone you know.’

'And? Hinami there are rumours going around that…’ He pauses, because they aren’t nice rumours, they make him out to be some sort of pervert and her a glorified sex toy.

To his surprise she only smiles, though her cheeks are still a soft pink. 'Do you think I haven’t heard them?’ 

'They’re disgusting.’

Her eyes are bright as she wrinkles her nose. 'You find the idea of me disgusting Ayato?’ She’s teasing him but he only grits his teeth and looks away. 'I know.’ She sighs, and her fingers brush across his knuckles where his hand rests on the garden table. 'I’ve heard you defending me too, but do you really want them to know I’m basically living at your place?’ 

He shrugs. 'It’s not like there’s anything going on.’ Her fingers feel heavier on his hand. 'Is there?’

She pulls back her hand and looks back to the roses. 'No, but you haven’t seen me in a swimsuit yet.’

'Do you even own one you runt?’ He sits up and when she shakes her head he laughs loud enough to catch the attention of some ghouls at the other end of the garden.

'Kids like that ordering us around. She lets him stick it to her and she can walk around like she’s the fucking queen.’ The first says, a grizzled old ghoul with a bit too much meat on his bones.

The second, a young ghoul with cropped tawny hair and a hungry glint in his dark eyes takes a good look at the pair, at the girl in particular. 'Wonder what he’d say if we stuck it to her.’ He turns back to his partner. 'Wonder if he’d throw her away.’

Ayato breaks his jaw, Hinami watches the petals fall. 

  
IV.

Eto breezes in one day next Spring, when she’s straddling him on the shitty sofa. 'Don’t get up.’ She greets, and Ayato knows straight away she’s not there for him, she’s in her civvies and she’s not looking at him at all. 'Just came to tell you that you’re training is changing. Seems you’ve learnt all you can from Ayato-kun.’ She beams, waves a hand towards the two flustered teenagers, then departs without another word.

'What?’ She gasps, only to jump as his lips close on the soft skin just beneath her ear. 'Stop! Ayato…’

'What do you want me to do?’ He frowns, and the soft touches and curious kisses of the past ten minutes are soured by the look of disinterest he now wears, his stupid shield.

'Say something…’

'To who?’ He laughs, but its not the pleasant huff she can usually coax from him. 

She tries to move backwards, tries to slide from his lap but his grip stills her. 'They’ll…’ She feels stupid, mostly for assuming he was attached as she was, then for not realising that they wouldn’t be found out when really they weren’t being at all cautious.

'Look,’ his thumb moves in unsure but calming circles as he speaks. 'I could go tell Tatara that there’s nothing going on but I’d like to keep training you, but since Eto just saw this, and it does look worse than it is, he’s just going to laugh me out. 

'Uh.’ She covers her mouth with her hand. He can see her cheeks burning behind it. 'I couldn’t even move.’

'Another ten minutes and we could have been naked.’ He tries to joke but she only starts to cry above him. 'Hey, stop. It’s fine. It’s not like I won’t see you.’

She sniffs. 'It isn’t that…’

He’s about to ask what it actually is but the way she is looking at him stops him. Her eyes are searching his, asking more questions. They have been kissing to kill time, avoiding anything deep, avoiding too much eye contact, but now its all there is, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands until she kisses him.

'It doesn’t matter.’ He finds himself panting between desperate kisses. 'Doesn’t matter because if anybody… If anybody hurts you…’

She’s crying again but he doesn’t mind because it’s for him, and he’s always been a little bit selfish.

  
V.

On the warm nights they sleep on top of the duvet, but they curl in to eachother like its twenty below. 

She has been out again, analysing data and learning to track without sight. She doesn’t tell him anything about her training, but she’s always sore and stiff and he always knows where his hands should press little circles and where they should avoid hidden bruises. He had woken up when she climbed in beside him.

'There was a festival today.’ She sighs against the feverish skin of his shoulder. 'Would you take me next year?’

He sweeps her hair aside and kisses her brow. 'Sure. I’ll go to the summer festival with you.’ He’d be laughed out of the tree but he’d do it. 

'You smell like blood.’ her voice is weak, strained.

'So do you.’ 

The kiss is so unlike her he almost pushes her off. It’s all heat and need and she’s crying but her body is moving like she’s never been more sure. 'Please, Ayato.’ She pulls him closer.

He thinks that now is a good time to bring it up, her change. It’s Summer outside but she’s ran out of colour. She’s washed out and grey and she might be firmer in his hands, she might be beautiful now but he misses that stupid smile and the doe eyes that were too big for her stupid face. 

'Hina.’ He catches her hands before she can yank down his pyjamas and brings them up to kiss at the knuckles.

'Please.’ She says again in a voice so small. 

It’s the next morning when he marches in and slams his fist on the makeshift desk. 'What are you doing to her?’ He almost growls.

That thing they brought out of the lab a few months ago grins at him from behind Eto, white hair and single red eye conjuring images of that shitty…

  
'She’s pulling her weight, finally.’ Tatara grunts without looking up. 'I suggest you continue to do the same.’

The freak leans forward. 'Is Hina-chan coming to play today?’

'Sh.’ Eto coos like she’s talking to a puppy, not a person. 'Not today, but we’re playing tomorrow.’

'No you’re not..’ Ayato hisses. 'She’s not…’

'Hina’s a big girl, Ayato-kun.’ She drawls. 'She can handle it. You did.’

He has no answer for that.

  
VI.

The temperature drops, the leaves fall and Tokyo is filled with a synthetic spiced pumpkin scent that even makes ghoul’s noses twitch. She’s bought a few candles of the sort for his… For their shitty apartment, but she left without burning a single one. 

'I’m back.’ She announces as if she’s been gone a day, not two months.

He shrugs, continues cutting up the food for the next few days. He killed it himself, and it made him feel a bit better. 

'Ayato-kun?’ She slinks up behind him, her hands roam over the hard muscles of his chest and her head rests on his broad shoulders. 'You got big.’ She whispers.

'Hm.’ He puts the knife down with a bit more force than necessary. 

'I won’t be going again.’ She holds him tighter. 'I’m finished training.’ 

He closes his eyes, tries to focus on the feeling of her fingers on his skin. 

'I can work with you now. I won’t be a burden.’ 

He takes her hand in his own, and its so delicate… she seems so delicate. 'You back for good?’ 

'I’m back for good.’

'Good. I’m getting tired of cleaning this shitty place.’

'Hah.’ She smiles as he spins around to face her. He does look strange, older, handsome not cute. She wonders if she looks any different to him.

'God.’ He looks over her features, hand cupping her jaw before his lips press firmly against her own. 

She lights the bastard candles while he’s lying there, sheets low on his waist, staring at the ceiling. She has slung on his old hoodie while she’s moving around lighting them all, and its too long and strange on her, given her new librarian aesthetic. 

'Didn’t throw all my things away?’ She clambers on to the bed, pulling the jacket down so it still covers the tops of her thighs. 

'I had given you another month.’ He shrugs, running a hand up to the hemline of his jacket. 'Then it was all going in to the river.’

'Of course.’ She giggles, catching his hand before it can slip under the fabric. 'You’d have to throw out all of your own clothes.’

'No because I wear them…’

'When do you wear this anymore?’ she frowns. 

'When you’re not here wearing it.’ He sits up properly, taking her wrists in one hand and pulling her forward. 'It’s my jacket, not yours.’

'It smells like you.’ She blushes.

He moves his free hand up between her thighs, just nudging the hemline. 'I only just got the smell of you out of it.’

'I missed it.’ She snatches her hands free but doesn’t stop him. 'I missed you.’

The candles burn down but the artificial orange pumpkin scent is in their hair for almost a week.

  
VII.

'If you’re being careful it shouldn’t matter’, Miza shrugs, having no particular desire to continue the conversation. 

'Careful…’ Hinami blushes. It’s not really a word they can use to describe them. 

'Just don’t go running off to start a family.’

'No chance of that.’ She sighs, though there is actually a chance their luck will run out.

The first snow of December is falling around them, and the thought of their shitty apartment, of curling up between the sheets is heavy on her mind. 

The talk has stopped, no one is looking at her like she has fucked her way to the top anymore, and he hasn’t needed to break anymore jaws. 

At home he comes in after her, arms charred with smoke and shirt a little bit bloody. She doesn’t ask about it, just makes him a coffee and waits. 

'Seems a bit perverse, to attack them on Christmas Eve.’

She swallows. 'I didn’t think you’d think like that.’

'Well, it’s important to them isn’t it.’

She smirks, reopening her book and finding the right sentence. 'Sure.’

  
VIII.

The roses bloom again. They are a bit like her really, something that should be colourful all washed out, even in Spring. He thinks that she might be happier in her cell with her nii-chan than she ever was with him. 

It doesn’t matter though. They won’t keep her long, not someone of her reputation, someone with so much talent. Replaceable talent apparently but the doves wont think of her that way. A spring breeze ripples through the garden, the rose bushes sway from side to side. 

Do they know she has twin kagunes? That they could cut her up and stuff her in two silver suitcases, not one. 

He thinks that he liked her too much, even if her colours faded with the seasons. If he got her back he’d make her brighter, let her smile like she had when she’d first got there… No, like before that. Yeah, before that.


	5. Day 5 - AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her parents deaths Hinami moves in with her new gaurdian, Kaneki Ken. Their new apartment is in the 14th ward, has a great view, two spacios rooms and the rent is blissfullly low. The catch? It might just be haunted by the last two inhabitants and the Kirishimas are not keen on sharing.

The first night it was only an unsettling niggle in the back of her head. You get that whenever you move in to a new house, she told herself. It was a chill whenever she strayed too far to the left side of the bed, and a slight creek of the floorboards at the bottom. The first night it was just an overactive imagination. 

'Yoshimura-san,' Kaneki, his eyes the same sleep deprived pink as her own, greeted the landlord one afternoon after about a week of unsettling nights. 'I couldn't find the source of the draught...'

'Draught?' The old man scratched his chin. 'In your room?' 

Kaneki hung his head. 'I'll admit, I think its just my imagination.'

Hinami sipped her coffee, casting her eyes back to the door of her room. 

'And what about you Hinami-chan.' The old man smiled, a smile that reached his wrinkled eyes and lit up his entire space. 'I do hope your room is to your liking.'

'It is.' She smiled back. 'The view from my room is spectacular.' 

'Really.' He chuckled low in his chest. 'Ayato used to complain there was too much light in the morning.'

'No.' She laughed softly. 'It's really perfect for waking up.' 

'Good. I am glad. I'm only down the hall if you need anything.' He stood, and with a bow Kaneki showed him to the door. He let his head droop for a moment, then tuned and smiled as if about to say something cheerful.

Hinami's eyes widened as he fell back against the door, watching him shrink in a panic.

'I don't think we've introduced ourselves.' The boy who was now sitting beside her, his arm thrown around her shoulder though he wasnt touching her, drawled through a menacing smile. 

'And we're not going to.' The woman with soft violet hair smiled sweetly, though her face was all shadows and teeth. 'Get out of our apartment!' 

Hinami came to with her new brother fannning her face, blinking in the orange afternoon light at the vague shapes of people over his shoulder. 'Nii-chan...' She squeaked, and the woman with the cruel face dropped down beside him, smiling in a way that was not unkind. 

'Hello.' She smiled, and if she was cruel before now she was beautiful, so soft from her slightly curved lips to her kind deep blue eyes. 'I'm sorry about that just now. I'm Touka, Kirishima Touka. That is my brother Ayato.'

'We're ghosts.' The boy hufffed, and she could see from his profile there was nothing soft about him. 'Get out of our house.' He added, and his sister gave him a glare that could kill. 'What?'

'Don't mind him Hinami-chan, sit up, let us make you a coffee and we'll explain everything.'

What she had meant by 'us' was that she would bark orders at Kaneki while her brother would spread himself out in the couch trying to ignore the very flustered Hinami. 

They explained most things, like the fact they had lived there since their father's disappearance when they were only children, how Yoshimura had given them a good deal on the rent since they were sleeping rough behind his coffee shop and all. 'We haven't been dead long.' Touka sighed, leaning back against the kitchen counter. 'And we're not very good at this haunting thing.'

'Tch. I did just fine.' Ayato grinned, all sharp teeth as he winked at Hinami. 

'Ayato.' His sister warned. 'This isn't their fault.'

The boy leapt to his feet, hands shoved in his pockets, 'Not ours either shitty Aneki!'

'Where are you going?' She put her hand to her forehead and for the first time Hinami could tell she was a little less solid than them, a tad opaque. The front door slammed shut and the temperature rose a little bit.

Kaneki scratched his chin. 'He seems nice Kirishima-s...'

'Oh save it.' She huffed, shaking her head so that just for a moment both eyes were visible, both just as cross with him. Her hair fell back in to place and her temper receded. 'Fueguchi Hinami, welcome to our home.' 

He didn't bother her for the next few nights.

* * *

'Hinami. Oi! You shitty girl in my bed, Oi!'

She woke up with a start, her book open and pressing uncomfortably against her cheek. His face a few inches from her made her bolt upright, and then her head spun. 'Ayato!' She hissed, eyes searching for her clock in the lamplight. 'You can't be in here.'

'It's my room Hina.' The two syllables rolled from his tongue like a barb. 'This is my bed, and I want that side.'

She ran a hand through her hair, trying to take stock of the situation. 

'I've been patient enough. Move!' 

She thought about calling out to his sister, or shrieking for Kaneki who would come in and rant until the boy slunk away or was dragged by Touka-chan. 

'Okay.' She whispered, closing the book and throwing it over the side of the bed. 'I'll move to that side.' She watched as he grinned, not the fierce grin of their first meeting but something cheeky. 'What, and you're going to let a boy sleep in your bed?' 

'I don't want to wake up NiI-chan so...'

'Okay Princess.' He stood and walked around to the left side, waiting for her to scoot over to the right. 'You're so small, why do you even need a double bed?'

She turned off the lamp and lay down, turning to face away from him. 'I'm too tired.' She yawned.

'Really. How old are you? Fourteen...'

'I'm sixteen.'

'Sixteen and you have an older boy in your bed. The scandal!'

'Shut up.' She whined, scrunching her eyes closed. If she tried she could almost pretend he wasn't there, that he was all in her imagination. Her imagination was imperfect however and she found herself turning back to him. 'How old are you Ayato-kun.' She stammered. She was doing it, she was talking to a ghost. She was officially crazy. The stress from losing her parents and the move and such must have rattled something loose...

'Now or when I was thrown from a car to grind face first along the road?'

She held her breath. 

'Almost eighteen.' He swallowed. And for a ghost the bob of his Adams apple, the slight tremble of his lips was too real, too solid. 'Either way.'

'Oh.' She sighed, watching him as her own eyelids grew heavy. 

'Oh.' He repeated in that dry voice of his.

* * *

 'Fueguchi, you look like shit.' A boy in her new class, in her new school full of strangers, informed her just before the bell rang.

'You do.' He chimed from the vacant seat behind. 'Trouble sleeping?'

She bit her lip and tried to focus on the equations in front of her. He clapped his hands together right next to her ear and she jumped back.

'Careful.' He smirked, leaning to whisper in her ear. 'They'll think you're crazy.'

She pinched the bridge of her nose. Once the bell had rang she lingered, and in the empty classroom she snapped. 'Ayato-kun, I can put up with this at home but if you continue to harass me at school...'

'Put a sock in it.' He laughed, picking up some chalk with a look of extreme concentration on his face. 'I'm just having some fun.'

'Fun?' She snatched up a cloth and wiped the swear word he had just drawn from the chalk board. 'Is this fun?'

 He laughed down at her, marking the watery quality of her usually bright brown eyes. 'Well it is for me.'

'Why?' She sniffed. 'Wh... Why do you want everyone to hate me?' 

He sighed, perching on the edge of the teacher's desk. He was taller than her, even sitting down, and she thought distantly that if he were a boy in the year above she would never even look at him. His dark eyes seemed to soften as his shoulders slumped, lips pulled in to a straight line. 'If I tell you, you can't tell Aneki.'

She thought for a moment then nodded, expecting a confession of missing school, or normal life. 

'I want my apartment back.' He shrugged. 

She fell back against the wall. 'Ayato-kun.' She sighed. 'Why...'

'Because she says she doesn't mind, and she's playing happy homes with your stupid brother but she made that for us, she worked so hard for it and I want her to have it back.'

When they finally get home, having walked the whole way in a not uncomfortable silence, its to find Touka with her arms wrapped around Kaneki, their faces so close they could almost...

'Hey!' Ayato booms, and Hinami can almost see it, the blood and torn flesh drawing down his otherwise smooth face. It flickers about him like a mirage. 'Get off him. What are you doing?'

'Eh?' Touka scowls in response, but she doesn't look any different. 'There's something in his eye.'

Kaneki nods, ruffling his hair. 'Hinami-chan, perhaps you should get it out instead.' 

'Maybe you can stay.' He sighs when he finally calms down, his weight settling on the left side of the bed. 'She seems happier now you're here.'

* * *

Yoshimura delivers the news one morning over coffee. He's sitting next to Hinami, Kaneki is perched on a chair from the kitchen table and the ghosts are swinging their legs off the kitchen counter.

'The young woman who used to live here is still alive, in a coma. I felt like I should tell you.' His old eyes wash over the kitchen counter. 'In case she wakes up and wants her apartment back.'

They are all still stunned when Kaneki returns from closing the door. 

'Still alive.' Touka swallowed, looking down at her hands as if they might strangle her.

'That's good news...' Kaneki sat down next to Hinami, taking her hand.

Touka's face finally flickers. Hinami can see the blood on her forehead where she hit the steering wheel or the glass, the pale blue of her lips, the fracture in her nose. 'I should be dead.' She growls, and at once Ayato hops down and heads to his... to Hinami's room. 

He returns barely two seconds later, face twisted in thought. 'It isn't your fault.' He says mechanically. 'I'm happy you're alive.' Then he's gone again.

Kaneki has his hand on her shoulder, and Hinami realises she hadn't even seen him cross the room. 'We'll wake you up. It's okay. I want you to live Touka-chan. I want you to live, even if you don't.'

When had that happened? Hinami had thought of them for some time as a unit, as the unofficial parents to the girl and the ghost, but when had they touched? How could they touch?

* * *

 

'Ayato-kun.' She whispers as she puts down her book on the occult and looking up at him. He was staring off out the window at the foot of the bed. 'What do you think your unfinished business is?'

He smirked. 'There was this girl in my class who would fuck anyone.'

'Eh?'

'And I was going to invite her round at the same time as this girl from class four...'

'Okay. Okay. Forget it then.'

He laughed, turning on his side. It wasn't a friendly laugh, she could see the underlying tenseness, the sadness in his eyes. He swept his fringe up from his face, and she felt her heart pinch. 

'I'm seventeen. Life was my unfinished business.' He turns back to look up at the ceiling. 'You're going to grow old and grey and marry some shitty file pusher and have three kids and forget that there's this seventeen year old boy stuck here. She'll have to as well.'

Hinami outstretched her hand, then pulled it back. 'Uh, can I?' She whispered.

He turned his head to scrutinise her, then shrugged and held out his hand. 'I don't know can you?'

The touch was strange, something and nothing all at once. His fingers brushed against hers like a memory of a sensation, and when he pulled away it took her a moment to notice. He looked confused, disappointed maybe. 'I thought you'd go straight through.'

'Me too!' She smiled and to her surprise he was fighting back one of his own. 'Me too.'

* * *

'Nee-chan,' she said one day as Touka lounged in her room. 'Doesn't it bother you that they've gone to see your body?'

'No,' She shrugged. 'But if shitty Kaneki thinks he'll kiss me he's dead.'

Hinami giggled, looking back down at her homework. 

'So,' Touka beamed. 'How does it feel being seventeen?' 

'Ah. Not so different from sixteen.' The girl blushed. Her palm tingled as she thought about the touch. 

The warmth of the room faded, and when she turned back to the bed the woman was gone. 'Nee-chan?' She put down the pen and began to search. 'Nee-chan?' Nothing.

Ayato watched as his sister blinked. They'd shaved half of her head, and there were too many machines to keep track of, she didn't look like Kirishima Touka at all until her eyes opened. 

'Touka-chan.' Kaneki grasped her hand, tears rolling down his face. 'She's awake!'

Something loud thumped in the boys chest, he had to look away.

'Get a nurse!' He remembered that the boy he was talking to was a spectre after the third command, and rushed out in to the hallway himself. 

He walked out in a daze, and before he knew it he was back in his shitty room, and the whole place was empty. This, he thought with a deep sigh, was his future. They'd been living there for almost six months, that shitty Kaneki and her, and the whole time he'd been trying to remind himself that this would be it in the end. 

'Ayato.' Her voice made him start. He sat up on the bed, blinking as if his eyelids could wipe her away. Had he been so deep in thought he'd missed her coming back? Missed her lying down beside him where she could almost touch him for a while.

'What...'

'I was coming to find you.' She sniffed, and her hand, solid and warm, reached out for his. 

'No!' He snatched his hand back before changing tactic and seizing her by the shoulders. 'No, go back to your body! Where is it? We'll go there!'

'Ayato...'

'You can't die! You have to grow old and marry a pencil pusher.'

'Hey.' She laughed, bringing her hand up to cup his chin. 

Not for the first time he noticed she was beautiful, and he felt his heart break at the way she was looking at him, felt the need to pull away and not disappoint himself. 

'Don't waste your life on me.' He closed his eyes, prayed that her touch would fade from his face. Instead he felt the heavy weight of her lips on his own, then felt the soft skin of her neck press against his as she hugged him to her.

'I feel strangely okay.' She sighed. 

He hugged her to him, hand stroking over her spine, tracing the shoulder blades. 'I'm tired.' He murmured against her hair.

She nodded. 'It's okay I think.'

'They'll be fine.' He pressed a kiss to her temple.

Everything else was white. 

 

 


	6. Day 6 - Lasts

The last time she says his name he can barely hear it. There's ringing in his ears, blood pouring down one side of his face under his cracked rabbit mask. He doesn't know where she is but he can hear bullets and shouts and screams and he wants to hear her again but he can't see. No matter how fast he wipes it away he can't see to find her.

* * *

' _Hinami,' He looked her over as she ate, still in the plain white robe they'd kept her in. 'Your hair...'_

_She swallowed the last and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist, hand shaking. 'You shouldn't have come to get me.' She stands but her knees are weak and he had to catch her._

_'You could be grateful.' He snapped, and he knew it wasn't her he was angry at, not really._

_She wound her fingers in his hair, gripped him with more strength than he'd thought she'd have. 'Ayato-kun, if you had died for me I'd be less than grateful.'_

_He held her firmly around the waist, face softening as he tried to read her expression._

_'Please don't throw your life away like that!'_

* * *

Sorry, he thinks as he rips off the mask, letting it drop to the floor at his knees. Something grabs on to him, falls in to his lap, and he knows by the way she grips his collar that it's her. 'Sorry.' 

She wipes away the blood with one hand. 'It's okay.' She tells him, and he hears a matching clatter as her mask hits the floor next to his own. It's the last time they'll take them off.

'I can't see you.' He fists his hands in to her cloak.

'I know.' She runs a finger over his brow. 'It'll heal...' There's a thud and she falls forward, and under his hand he can feel the hot wet flow of blood from her lower back. 

The sound of her kagune, the defense she had inherited from her mother, wrapping around them makes him freeze. 'You can go.' He swallows. 'I'll follow.'

'No you won't.' She sighs, and he is pulled against her chest, her arms holding him to her. 

* * *

_She had grown stronger over the past few weeks, but he still kept her under constant watch. 'Really, Ayato-kun. I can make a coffee on my own.'_

_She blushed as his hand came to rest on the small of her back._

_'Just get used to it.' He grunted._

_Hinami closed her eyes. At the tree there was always an undertone of affection, a possible spark that was of secondary importance. Since her rescue he'd been more and more obvious, he'd been close and attentive._

_She turned, still between him and the kitchen counter. 'I can stand just fine.'_

_He brought his hands down to loop at her wrists. 'I'm not very good at this.' He shrugged._

_She laughed. 'Well you could kiss me.'_

_'Really, what makes you think I want to kiss you?' He answered too quickly._

_'I don't know. I just...'_

_He cut her off with a small chaste peck, and when she had opened her eyes he was marching back towards his room._

_She followed him, determination filling her gentle features as she let the door shut behind her with a click. As soon as he turned she threw her hands about his neck, pulling him down to meet her lips. His hands were rough on her arms, his lips were bruising, and when he finally began to pull at her shirt the buttons gave with torn thread and violent pops._

_In the moonlight his skin shone a pale blue, and she traced the muscles and shadows of his shoulders from where she lay on his chest, the sheets pushed down to her lower back where his hands rested._

_'Will you always kiss me like that?' She asked, glancing up to his eyes. 'Like it'll be the last time?'_

_He nodded, and to prove his point brought his lips to hers in another fierce kiss. 'If you want me to.' He settled back down against the pillow and smiled at the press of her soft lips to his collar bone._

* * *

The last time he kisses her it's nothing like any before. It's slow, there's barely enough energy for it but somehow he grips on to her, somehow their lips move together until they aren't anymore, they are only too close, breathing each others air. He remembers that there's a bullet lodged somewhere in his brain, wonders if its the part that governs emotions because he should be sad but he's not. She's smiling against his lips too, so he's not alone. 

Her grip is starting to slip from around her neck, and he's not sure if it's the blood or the blood loss that's making holding her up difficult. 'Hina.' He blinks, and if he tries he can just make out the shape of her face, and the sepia light cast through her kagune. 'Please.'

The strain is too much and he buckles forwards, lowering her to the road surface before crumpling beside her. 

* * *

The last thing he sees is the shitty eyepatch mask, though beside him the uneven wings of his sister are blazing as she scoops the mask less Hinami up in to her arms. 'Good.' He thinks, settling against the tarmac. 

* * *

He feels like he's been hit by a truck. His eyes hurt before he even opens them, and when he does the light is so bright he has to cover them with his arm. Hands are pulling at his and he starts to fight back, starts to thrash and pull.

'Ayato-kun!' 

He stills, heart thumping painfully in his chest because the last time was supposed to be the last time and he'd prepared for it, come to terms with it.

She's there though, and she pulls his arms away so he has to look, has to see her and her puffy eyes and her blood matted hair. The bullet must still be in his brain because he can feel his eyes prickling, and before gd can stop himself he's crying too. 


End file.
